Podcast Tuesday: June 20, 2017

Podcasts on my phone: 1003

A couple of weeks ago, I tried to explain to Hubby why decision making is so hard for me.  It’s not because I am deciding what to do but I am deciding what not to do.  When I decide to read, I am actually deciding not to listen to podcasts or clean or watch TV or color or anything else.  Then I begin to wonder if I have made the right choice or if, even though my book is really good and I can’t wait to find out what happens, I might not get more out of one of the things that I have chosen not to do.

It’s gross.  It’s real pessimism, I think.  Whatever I am doing is obviously not the right thing.  Obviously.

Where I’m going here is that I have not listened to many podcasts this week.  There are a couple of reasons for that.

First, when I am at home I only listen to them when Hubby is gone or is outside or is otherwise occupied.  I’m not sure why.  I feel kind of like I am intruding on him when I listen to stuff, I guess.  Even in the mornings, I listen to podcasts until he gets up.  I pause when he passes through the living room and goes out for his morning smoke.  I pause when he comes back in.  And so on.  He doesn’t necessarily interrupt or even comment about my podcasts.  I should just let them run.

Second, I’ve been listening to an audiobook in my car.  I had intended to go back to audiobooks when I came back to work in May but I put it off a couple of weeks so that I could keep playing catch up with my podcasts.  Then I decided that it was important to me to read 100 books this year and the only way that I can do that is with audio added in.  I am listening to Anne of Green Gables which I have never read and I am really enjoying it.  But I miss my podcasts.  Today I’m taking a break from Anne’s antics and playing catch up instead.

Last week I talked about Zestology and On Being, both podcasts that make me feel like being healthier even if I don’t go through with it.  Once upon a time, two summers ago, I went on a girls trip with my friends and the day I came home was Father’s Day.  Hubby had gone to visit his dad and the house was empty when I got home.  I had a raging hangover and was feeling pretty GD terrible about myself.  So, I turned on a church podcast.  Seriously.  I listened to it and it spoke to me and I got my house clean and got myself together and vowed to lead a better life.

Sometimes I need that, that idea that I can be more than I am.  Podcasts get me there a little bit faster than books.

Podcast Tuesday- June 13, 2017

Podcasts Downloaded: 978

It looks like I made big headway in my listening this week but don’t be fooled!  What I actually did was unsubscribe from The Archers, a daily UK podcast that is supposedly something like a soap.  I never actually listened to The Archers but I started following it back in the winter and planned to get around to it eventually.  The problem was that eventually is still sometime in the future and in the meantime I have TONS to listen to and I can’t see a point in downloading episodes every day for something that I’m not going to listen to for a very long time.

I needed to trim some fat.

Last week I got into a couple of podcasts about well being.  I listened to some On Mindfulness and an episode of Zestology.  It had an effect on me.  I found myself wanting to be healthier and happier and just better all around.  On Mindfulness is interesting.  I’m not sure if I like it or not but I can’t seem to turn it off.  I’m not sure if I take anything away from it but I can’t seem to help listening.  Then there’s Zestology.  I ran across the host, Tony Wrighton, on a blog months ago and added his podcast.  I can’t say that it’s terribly useful for me.  I’m not going to long distance, or even short distance for that matter, run in the future and I probably won’t do bone broth shots anytime soon but just listening to people talk about being healthy made me want to be healthy.

And now, here I am, trying to get a handle on my eating and trying to get my steps in, tracking my food and tracking my activity.

But, you know, listening to podcasts really adds to the environment of our lives.  I feel like even if I am not taking in all of the advice on these kinds of shows, I am soaking in the healthful sounds and being a healthier person…  It’s almost like watching someone else exercise.

Podcast Tuesday- May 30, 2017

Podcasts Downloaded:  1117

Today I want to talk about a podcast that I slammed through a couple of weeks ago.  It was my last week of maternity leave and I was interested in making some kind of permanent dent in my podcast collection.  I have a couple that are completed, kind of like Serial.  However, I only had one of those “completed” podcasts completely downloaded.  In the Dark.

True crime stuff is weird for me.  Like, sometimes I really do enjoy it.  Serial was so fascinating that I listened to it twice and I was riveted by Netflix’s Making a Murderer.  When I come across true crime books, I like to look at the pictures on the glossy pages in the middle.  In junior high, I closely followed the O.J. trial.  When I log out of my Yahoo email, I catch myself sucked into the gut wrenching stories of abuse and murder.  I don’t know why.  It’s kind of sick, this rubber necking.  But we all do it.

In the Dark is the story of a boy who went missing in 1989 and how the police department flummoxed the investigation.  While they were working on the story, a man confessed to the murder and led authorities to his body, which added an extra layer to the story and a couple of additional episodes.  It was one of those stories that didn’t seem like it could fill 10 episodes but was riveting the whole time.

I listened to it in two days.  If that is your cup of tea, I’d give it a shot.

Podcast Tuesday- Edition the First

Podcasts Downloaded: 1123

“Wait… What?” you say.  “Don’t you already have a Monday thing that you do?”

Yeah, I do but since I recently axed my Thursday project and another whole blog about my personal life, I’ve decided that it is time to talk about my other Project Major: my ongoing battle of the podcast buldge.

See, for many years I was working in an itty bitty library that was almost out of the county.  The village it was in came in at just under 450 residents in the last census and it was nestled in a kind of valley somehow.  Really!  It was described to me by a number of people as “being in the valley and too low to get a good internet signal” even though I drove UP a hill to get there and it appeared to have flat farm fields on all sides.  But valley, sure.  I’m sure that’s how internet works too.  (I don’t know.  I like to think that fairies live in my router.)

Anyway, it was such a small library in such a small village and with such a small sign that I spent a lot of time alone there.  No problem for me.  I love being alone.  (See: Maternity Leaver Hermitage.)  I would get to that branch and spend at least a couple of hours each night listening to podcasts and since I’m a little crazy about not going over my data limits, I would download all of my podcasts while I was at home even though the library obviously had wifi.  It saved my bored ass a number of times when the internet was down, which was also the number one way to make sure that I had NO patrons.

Recently, Hubby pointed out to me that it’s kind of stupid to download all of these podcasts when I can, you know, just listen to them on our data.  But I can’t.  I just can’t.  We probably won’t go over now that we have so much more but I can’t take that chance.  And, thus, I am playing catch up because they are taking up 38 gigs on my phone.  If you’re interested in a list of Podcasts I subscribe to (even though I haven’t even sampled most of them), you can check out this post.  I’ve only added a couple since then.

Over the next however long until I get bored, I will be talking to you about my podcast listening life, what I’m loving and what I’m not loving and what you OMG NEED to listen to.

That’s it for today, just a lay of the land, but if you’re looking for something to suck away your time, my suggestion for this week is In the Dark, a true crime podcast covering the story of an 11 year old boy who went missing in 1989.  Looking for something lighter?  Check out 99% Invisible, the endlessly fascinating podcast about design that I didn’t realize was about design until I was about 20 episodes deep.